News

RB version 1.0 to be released

At last, after over a year of being in DR1, RB is about to hit version 1.0. Version 1.0 will be released soon, and it is listed at $99.95. However, there are discounts available, so you can use the handy-dandy table to the right to find out which price is right for you.    The clean, refreshing feel of a whole version number won't last for long though—DR2 will be hitting the web for registered users of version 1.0 soon after its release.

Condition Price change Nothing Special $99.95 Academic (age<18) $59.95 (-40%) Site License

We'll have more on this big event in the Big News section.

Plugins take off!

   Beginning with version DR1r37, Plugins can now be included in a compiled project. In previous versions that supported plugins (see Big News, 6/98), if you tried to build an application that used a plugin, it would give you a "Bad Export" error. I know that I for one have been waiting anxiously for this to be included, and I know that many others have too.
   If you remember MadPlug—a plugin that received a four-star review last month, there are three player programs. One of them exists (MiniMad, by me), and two have been delayed in their release for several weeks now (SinPlayer, by Tim Spalone, and MadPlayer). Haha!. Anyway, MiniMad shows, and I'm sure the other two will show what can be done with MadPlug.

PowerPC compression

  New in DR1r38 was the ability for PowerPC applications to be compressed. The release notes said this fairly bluntly, so I decided to try a test. I took MiniMAD, an application of mine that allows you to play MAD files, and compiled it w/o compression. The actual file size was a whopping 712,491 bytes (696K). Then, I compiled it, and checked the "Compress" box. The Build Application dialog cleverly indicated that the application's RAM requirements would be raised by 600K. This time, the application was 387,611 bytes (379K)–nearly half the original size.
   This new option has proven itself to me to be a great feature, but keep in mind that if the application you're working with is small, then the saved disk space might not be worth the extra RAM.

My next adventure with VB importing

   The DR1r38 release notes also said that the VB importer was now compatible with Visual Basic 2.0 and higher. As Geoff pointed out, my problem with VB importing last month was that my form was from VB 3.0. So, expecting the worst, I pulled out the form I used last month. To my complete shock, it imported it! I tried another, more complex form, and it worked too.
   However, my ecstacy was soon lessened when I saw some of the big shortcomings that this importer has. For example, the lines and StaticText controls didn't keep their color, and the StaticText controls didn't remember their font (a simple WIN->MacOS conversion table would do, e.g. Times New Roman=Times), and their font size. These features wouldn't be hard to add, and I'd like to see them in a new version.

Spiffy New Progress Bars

   This month, two new progress bar controls have been released: CProgressBar, and Wacky Progress Bar. Wacky Progress bar does as its name implies: It makes wacky looking progress bars (see convincing screenshot). CProgressBar does neat things with non-wacky progress bars, such as mapping pictures onto them.

Compression for 68K applications

   Another cool new utility that was introduced this month is RBC. This program/module makes use of the fact that 68K applications that are compiled with RealBasic all have about 200K of the same stuff. RBC strips this off to compress them, and tacks it back on to decompress them. Best of all, that 200K is some of the worst stuff for compression with Stuffit, so you can make your applications even smaller. It's also available as a module, so you can make your own programs based off its two methods: Compress and Decomprss. RBC is available at The Realbasic Café.

RealBasic old version archive

   The RealBasic Café–the best place for RB programmers on the Internet–has started an old version archive. Last time I checked, they had versions dating back from the aged days of CrossBasic, when everyone put an x before the name of their program. So, if you have old versions of CrossBasic (they have all the versions of RealBasic), be sure to upload them!

String functions x2. Hong! Yah! Hah! Waah!

   In DR1r39, there were two items in the release notes that commented that there were now two versions of all the string methods (len, mid, left, right, etc.) The normal ones had been modified to work in terms of characters, not bytes. The old ones that worked under the assumption that one character=one byte have gotten a 'b' tacked onto the end of their names (e.g. lenb, midb).
   What does this mean in plain english? It means that Realbasic is now compatible with other, 16-bit alphabets, such as Japanese and Chinese. This doesn't mean that you can start using Japanese in your programs (you'll need special system software to do this). Japanese and Chinese for example, have one letter for most words, whereas we has 52 letters for most words (caps and lower case). Since there are more than 256 words in Chinese and Japanese, this means that they need to store each letter in a 16-bit slot as opposed to the 8-bit (one byte) spaces used for american letters and symbols.
   So if these modified methods are more compatible than the older ones, then why did Andrew Barry keep the old ones in? Simple. The older ones are faster, so if you don't plan on marketing your program in the Far East, you may as well use lenb, midb, and all their friends.

Now you can clutter any app you want to!!!!!

  A new feature in F1 was the Global Process window style. This style allows you to make toolbars that appear in applications other than the one you included them in. This is useful for when you want to make a small notification window (like the ICQ floater), or another palette for an appication. For example, you could add a favorites palette to your default browser by using the ShowURL method. This new window style is very cool and sometimes practical, but be warned: use these only when they're neccesary, things can get ugly if you make too many of them that apply to too many applications...

Version Jumps

    Beginning this month, we'll have a table of all the updates to RB in the past month. Here goes!

Ver	Date	Summary
DR1r36	5/31	Palettes now remember placement and visibility. Canvas has new scroll method. Many new AppleEvent methods.
DR1r37	6/6	Plugins now compile. (See news) RectControls now savvy. (That's not true!) Trim, LTrim, RTrim functions. Expanded property for hierarchial Listboxes.
DR1r37a	6/8	Bug fixes New serial port methods
DR1r38	6/11	Improved SpriteSurface RB now imports from Visual Basic 2.0 and higher (See news) PPC apps can be compressed. (See news)
DR1r39	6/22	New methods for multi-byte characters (see news) Plugins can now return strings GetSound method for ResourceFork (finally!) Underscores now allowed in Class&Object names
F1	6/26	GlobalProcess style windows CloseOnClick for SpriteSurface F1 stands for Final Candidate 1